The old ones are always the best

A raft of out-of-print cook books, some of which fetch hundreds of pounds secondhand, are now being republished. Avid collector
Tim Hayward picks the best and nominates other classic titles ripe for revival

Tim Hayward with some of his old cook books. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

However you characterise our national relationship with food you can't deny that we like to read about it. Cookery books by celebrity chefs, tied-in to television programmes and often ghost-written, have been a constant fixture in the UK bestseller lists for many years now.

However, while food publishing has never been in sleeker health, this is not necessarily good news for lovers of cook books. The latest celebrity offering might make an admirable gift for that hard-to-please relative but it's rarely the kind of thing you want to curl up in a corner with, and it seems publishers may be taking notice.

In September, in time for the lucrative Christmas market, Virago will reissue Cooking in a Bedsitter by Katharine Whitehorn. A practical cooking manual for busy urbanites, it's as relevant today as it was to its readers in 1961.

While Virago has undoubtedly been clever to spot the potential in older work it is only the latest publishers to do so. The aptly named Grub Street Publishing, run by food obsessive Anne Dolamore, first began reviving out-of-print cookery books in 1996. After producing gorgeous hardback versions of the Elizabeth David classics such as French Provincial Cooking (1960) and Spices, Salt & Aromatics in the English Kitchen (1970) to great acclaim the company has continued to republish a couple of deserving gems each year. In September it will release Arto der Haroutunian's Middle Eastern Cookery (1982) - a book so highly regarded by cooks that original copies change hands for around £400.

Grub Street has also notably rescued from obscurity the classic Simple French Food (1974), by the Provence-based American writer Richard Olney, as well as the work of Constance Spry, the woman who not only arranged the flowers at the Queen's coronation but who is also credited with creating the most famous course at the banquet. Constance Spry's Cookery Book (1956) is now a firm favourite on wedding lists, perhaps partly for reasons of irony but mostly for the original recipe for coronation chicken.

Persephone Publications, a small company printing "mainly neglected fiction and non-fiction by women, for women and about women", has already relaunched several forgotten kitchen classics of the 1930s. In October it will release The Country Housewife's Book by Lucy H Yates, a charming 1934 recipe book and housekeeping guide jammed with useful techniques for everything from pickling to moth extermination.

There remains, though, a wealth of untapped potential in classic recipe books which are still out of print, so I rummaged though my own collection of about 750, and consulted some fellow cook-book nerds to help me compile a selection of languishing gems we would like to see republished.

Colonel AR Kenney-Herbert who wrote one of the earliest cookery columns in Punch under the pen-name of Wyvern, is best remembered for Culinary Jottings for Madras (1878) - often reprinted as much for its social historical value recalling living conditions under the Raj as for the recipes. He was also responsible for the first recorded kebab recipe in England and was the first person to take breakfast seriously enough to write a whole book about it. Fifty Breakfasts (1894), still criminally out-of print, became the handbook for the sort of full-scale, all-the-trimmings morning blowouts that featured at Edwardian country-house weekends. The colonel would almost certainly have shot any chef who claimed to have a "signature dish", but "kitchri" - better known as kedgeree - was certainly his; an early recipe for it appears between devilled kidneys, snipe on toast and a bewildering variety of egg dishes.

In light of the fashionable resurgence of interest in foraging, there has probably never been a better time to revive Why Not Eat Insects? (1885) by Vincent M Holt. For those seeking hedgerow protein it is just the thing - a treatise that aimed to alleviate malnutrition among the urban poor with, for example, a recipe for mutton with wireworm sauce.

Chef and writer Mark Hix has made a speciality of resurrecting Britain's traditional recipes with his recent British Regional Food (2008) and his forthcoming British Seasonal Food (due in October). Read alongside Marwood Yeatman's The Last Food of England (2007) you would be forgiven for thinking that they constituted an up-to-the-minute trend. In fact there was quite a movement to resurrect and record old recipes between the wars led by Florence White, a freelance journalist who claimed to be the the first to specialise in food and cookery. White lived much of her life in genteel poverty and founded the English Folk Cookery Association, believing that "we had the finest cookery in the world, but it had been nearly lost by neglect". Though her Good Things in England (1932) was republished by Persephone in 1999, three more of her titles remain ripe for rediscovery. First choice is the brilliant, if quirky, Good English Food (1952), which ranges widely across British cooking including instructions on egg-boiling that exceed Delia's in precision plus detailed recipes for cooking with moss and making ham from badgers.

Elizabeth David is sometimes blamed for derailing the revival of traditional English cooking by turning the attention of the middle classes to French and Italian food. The patron saint of the scrubbed pine table has probably had all the relaunching she can handle but a reissue of some of the books that inspired her would help us understand her better. Before departing on the Mediterranean cruise that triggered her interest in the food of the region, David listed the books she intended to take with her. The Gentle Art of Cooking (1925) by Hilda Leyel and Olga Hartley is already available but Recipes of all Nations by Countess Morphy, 100 Ways of Cooking Eggs' by Marcel Boulestin and Good Savouries by Ambrose Heath remain tantalisingly out of print.

As the credit crunch bites, cooks are turning their minds to thrift. Persephone recently republished They Can't Ration These (1940) by Vicomte de Mauduit, a wartime guide to free food, but there is much more potential in this area. Throughout the years of rationing, the Ministry of Food published thousands of books and pamphlets giving accurately written advice on nutrition, cooking, shopping, food preparation and health. They involved the sort of research that programme-makers could never afford today, which may explain why Jamie Oliver's TV crusade this autumn will apparently be inspired by the Ministry of Food's wartime Dig for Victory allotment campaign.

Perhaps the most surprising name we unearthed from our dusty collections was Len Deighton. Better known for his spy thrillers, Deighton was originally an ad man and then a food writer on the Observer (1962-66). Also an illustrator and son of a cook, he pioneered a new kind of column he called a "cookstrip" in which a cartoon was used to demonstrate each recipe. Over several years he produced a complete course in classical French cookery which was collected and published as Ou est le Garlic in 1965 and expanded as Basic French Cooking in 1979. Long out of print, the books have attracted cult following for their brilliant design as much as for the comprehensive approach to cooking and, at a time when TV cooks are trying to simplify, educate and appeal to all, his democratising, demystifying approach couldn't be more appropriate. For now though, if you want it, trawling antiquarian book dealers is your only option.

Recipes from the past

A Yemeni dip and a breakfast from the Raj

Hulba (fenugreek dip)

A speciality of Yemen, this is a hot, spicy dip. Sometimes lamb or chicken meat is finely chopped and added to make it more substantial. If you prefer you can eliminate the rice and make up the quantities with lentils, or vice versa. Please note this is a hot dish - no exaggeration - particularly if you can find the hot chillies that a Yemeni would appreciate.

4 tbsps ground fenugreek

225ml/8 fl oz water

4 hot chillies

1 tsp salt

1 large tomato, peeled and finely chopped

2 spring onions, finely chopped, including heads

2 cloves garlic, crushed

½ tsp black pepper

¼ tsp ground cardamom

¼ tsp turmeric

75g/3oz boiled lentils

75g/3oz boiled rice

1 tsp coriander leaves, chopped

2 tbsps ghee (clarified butter)

About 150ml/¼ pint stock

Garnish

½ tsp powdered saffron

Place the fenugreek in a bowl, add the water and leave to soak for 5-6 hours. Carefully pour off the water then beat the fenugreek with a fork until frothy.

Cut the chillies in half, remove and discard seeds and stalks then chop the flesh very finely. Add the chillies to the fenugreek together with the salt, tomato, spring onions, garlic, black pepper, cardamom and turmeric and mix well. Now add the cooked lentils and rice and mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon. Transfer the mixture to a saucepan and stir in the coriander leaves, ghee and stock. Cook over a low heat, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is thick. Add a little more water if necessary. Pour the hulba into a large bowl, decorate with 1/2 teaspoon saffron and serve with flatbread as a mezzeh dip.

· This is an extract from Middle Eastern Cookery by Arto der Haroutunian, published by Grub Street at £18.99 in September.

Kitchri (kedgeree)

About 1lb/450g cold cooked fresh fish, or salt fish that has been soaked and either boiled or fried.

6oz/170g rice

3 hard-boiled eggs

3oz/85g butter

1 shallot

salt and pepper

1 tsp turmeric

Originally a dish of rice cooked with butter and an Indian pea called dal, but now it may either be composed of cold cooked fresh fish, or of salt fish that has been soaked and either boiled or fried. Choose which you prefer - about 1lb will be enough - and with a fork divide it into small pieces. Boil 6oz of rice. These preparations can be made overnight.

Boil three eggs hard, and with a fork crush them, whites and yolks together to a coarse mince. Melt over a low fire 3oz of butter, and fry a very finely minced shallot therein till it is a yellow colour; now stir in the rice using a wooden spoon, and the pieces of fish, season with pepper and salt and sufficient turmeric (about a teaspoonful) to tint the rice a nice yellow colour; lastly, shake into the mixture the crushed hard-boiled eggs, and empty the whole into a very hot dish.

· Extracted from Fifty Breakfasts (1894) by Colonel AR Kenney-Herbert, currently criminally out of print.